


Context Is For Kings

by Hexiva



Category: James Bond (Dynamite Entertainment Comics)
Genre: Background mentions of Bond&Moneypenny brOTP, Bisexual James Bond, Canon Character of Color, M/M, Misunderstandings, Rivals to Lovers, Secret Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:35:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29192388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexiva/pseuds/Hexiva
Summary: On a mission in Taiwan, Bond hacks John Lee's phone and finds a suspicious message. When Lee and his partner disappear in the middle of a mission, Bond confronts him, believing he's been betrayed.The truth is a lot more personal.
Relationships: James Bond/John Lee | Oddjob
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5





	Context Is For Kings

**Author's Note:**

> Another randomly generated prompt fic, the prompt being "James Bond / John Lee, context." For MI6 Cafe's Rarepair February. Also my first fic for the Dynamite Comics James Bond, which is my new favorite thing. Greg Pak is my hero and I for one welcome our new Hot Oddjob.

Bond wasn’t surprised to find himself here, in an MI6 safehouse in Taipei, working once again with South Korea’s least predictable agent John Lee and his partner Aria Kim. He’d gotten used to Lee’s habit of showing up out of nowhere, with his own mission and his own motives and never a straight answer. So the moment he’d gotten a chance, he’d used one of Q’s devices to hack into Lee’s phone and download all of his messages to his own phone.

And now he was sitting here, nursing a black eye with an icepack and a glass of bourbon, and waiting for Lee and Kim to return. They’d been in the middle of an assault on an enemy base when Lee and Kim had vanished, leaving Bond up shit creek and outnumbered. 

Bond stared into the depths of his bourbon glass moodily. He admitted to himself that he felt a little betrayed. The damnedest thing about Lee was that Bond liked him, or wanted to like him. How could he not, after everything they’d been through together? Bond’s hand went to the back of his neck, and massaged the scars left there from the Oru implants. Lee was handsome, charming, unpredictable - just like Bond, if he was being honest. He was infuriating, yes, always keeping Bond on his toes - but it was hard not to want to trust him, after everything Lee had done to save his beloved Kim. 

Bond wondered what he would have done if it had been his girl who had been brainwashed, lost to the other side. Would he have had the strength to hold out hope for all those years like Lee had? He knew he wouldn’t have. And he couldn’t even imagine who that girl would be. He wasn’t built like Lee, who was a romantic as much as he was a player. He was comfortable in drifting in and out of women’s lives, never leaving an impression. He wasn’t a heart-breaker, as far as he knew - he always made his intentions quite clear, and he’d never had much trouble. But there’d never been just one woman for him.

Well, there was  _ one  _ woman. An image of Moneypenny’s face, one eyebrow cocked in playful mockery, rose up in his mind, and Bond smiled. Yes, he loved Moneypenny, although he’d never hear the end of it if he ever said so. But they had established a long time ago that nothing was going to happen between them. They were both too comfortable with the way things were between them, their playful flirting, their banter, their friendship. Friendship was too rare in their line of work to throw that away for a good lay.

Lee, though . . . Bond wasn’t sure he could ever call him a  _ friend.  _ The other man was too unpredictable, too capricious, too reckless, too - 

Well. Too much like Bond. 

There was the sound of a key in the door, and Bond went for his gun, aiming it at the door as it opened to admit Lee.

Lee didn’t even look at him as he walked in, rolling his eyes skyward and tossing his hat carelessly to the side, where it hit the wall and embedded itself in it. “Why does dealing with the local authorities always have to be such a pain? Thought we were on the same side here, termination of diplomatic relations notwithstanding - ” His eyes finally landed on Bond, and he frowned, his posture stiffening. “Hey, put that thing away, what are you doing? It’s me.” 

“I know it’s you,” Bond said, coldly. “How is it, Mr. Lee, that you always seem to change teams just when I start to rely on you?”

“I told you, it’s John,” Lee said, distractedly. “What do you mean,  _ change teams?  _ I’m working for the same team as usual. And as far as I know, my bosses aren’t planning on back-stabbing yours, either. Put the gun away, I’ve had a long day, I’m too tired for this shit.”

“A long day doing  _ what?”  _ Bond snapped. “You disappeared and left me up shit creek without a paddle. Not for the first time, might I add.”

“If you’d  _ asked, _ instead of pulling a gun on me, I’d have told you that they had hostages,” Lee snapped back. “Aria and I were getting them out. She’s still back with the police making certain they don’t wind up tossed back in prison by the Taiwanese government.”

“How very humanitarian of you,” Bond said, not believing a word. “And convenient, too.”

“Convenient!” Lee threw his hands up, and dared to move further into the safehouse, despite the fact that Bond still had his gun trained on him. Bond thought,  _ I know exactly how deadly he is. I should pull the trigger before he gets so close.  _ He didn’t. 

Lee collapsed onto the couch across from Bond’s armchair, put his feet up on the armrest, and poured himself a glass of Bond’s bourbon without asking. “Are you always this paranoid, or am I the only one who gets this treatment?” He took a sip of the bourbon, and tilted his head, studying Bond thoughtfully. “Hmm. It’s not just our disappearing act, is it? There’s something else that’s got your nose in a twist.”

“As a matter of fact there is.” Bond drew his phone out of his pocket with his other hand, and opened the archive of Lee’s downloaded messages. He pulled up one of the conversations, and tossed his phone to Lee. “Explain this.”

Lee caught the phone, as Bond had known he would, in mid-air, and looked down at the text conversation. His expression was difficult to read. If Bond didn’t know better, he would have said Lee was embarrassed. “You hacked my  _ phone?”  _ Lee said, injured. 

“Yes - well,” Bond said, with a shrug. “You know what the Russians say.  _ Trust, but verify.  _ Most of your messages were of no interest to me - I suppose you know better than to talk work on an Apple phone - but this one drew my suspicion. And when you vanished on our mission today - well - my suspicions were proved right, weren’t they?”

Lee looked down at the conversation again, and then tossed the phone into a spin with a flick of his wrist, the way he threw his hat. Bond grabbed the phone out of the air. 

“This doesn’t prove anything,” Lee said, evasively. 

“‘Hope you’ll keep our conversation last night to yourself, Aria,’” Bond read out loud from the text messages. “‘I wouldn’t want for our friend James to learn my little secret before I’m ready.’ Rather suspicious, wouldn’t you say?” 

“This isn’t what you think it is,” Lee insisted. “You’re seeing one text message in a vacuum. Haven’t you ever heard? Context is for kings. Like that Star Trek episode.”

“A lot of words to say nothing much,” Bond said. “What’s your context?”

Lee looked away. “It’s personal. None of your business. Nothing to do with you.”

“Nothing to do with me, and yet I’m mentioned by name in this message?” Bond asked, raising an eyebrow. “What exactly is it that you’re so eager to keep from MI6’s prying eyes?”

Lee leaned his head back against the armrest, massaging his forehead with his hands. “I’m not keeping anything from MI6. I’m keeping it from  _ you.  _ Like I said. It’s personal.”

“And what exactly is this ‘personal’ secret that somehow involves me?” Bond asked, skeptical.

Lee rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “God, you’re really gonna make me say this at gunpoint, aren’t you? It’s like Truth Or Dare on steroids. I’m too old for this shit, let me tell you.”

“Talk,” Bond said, coldly.

Lee sighed. “All right, all right. But don’t blame me when this makes things cripplingly awkward.” He folded his arms over his chest. “I, Agent John ‘Oddjob’ Lee, have a crush on you. Is that personal enough for you? Extracted enough top-secret South Korean intel out of me yet? Can you put the damn gun away now?”

“Oh,” Bond said. 

“Yes.  _ Oh.  _ Have you had enough of embarrassing me or would you like to go another round?”

Bond flicked the safety back onto his gun, and set it carefully down on the table between them. He wasn’t quite sure what to say. After a moment, he said, “I thought you and Aria . . . ?”

“We were,” Lee said, his eyes on the ceiling. “Before Oru. Now . . . Christ, James, you saw what it did to us, after just a few days. She was under their control for  _ years.  _ She’s not ready to be with  _ anyone.  _ And I’m going to be by her side, every step of the way, until she feels like herself again - but I’m not going to wait for someone who doesn’t want me to wait.”

Bond looked away, unsure if he was doing it to spare his own dignity or Lee’s. He felt like a complete asshole. “I didn’t know,” he said.

“And maybe you never would’ve, if you hadn’t decided to hack my damn phone,” Lee snapped.

“It’s my job to collect information,” Bond said, quietly. “Even on my allies.”

Lee was silent for a moment, and then he sighed. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Okay, yeah. Guess I can’t exactly judge you for that. We’re all in the same boat, in this business.” He set his glass of bourbon, now empty, on the table between them. “Listen. Pour me another glass of bourbon, and let’s forget all of this. We’ve both had a long day.”

Bond refilled Lee’s glass, and then topped up his own. They drank in silence for a time. 

After their third round went down, the warm fog of drunkenness descending on them, Bond said, “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Lee laughed. “Our working relationship’s enough of a mess as it is. And things are . . . different in Korea. Besides, I know a straight guy when I see one, and I wasn’t psyched about the idea of you kicking me in the nuts - again - because I came on to you.”

“To be fair, you were trying to kill me with a frying pan at the time,” Bond pointed out.

“Not  _ kill.  _ Just  _ incapacitate,”  _ Lee objected.

“And I don’t think you’re quite as good at guessing a man’s sexuality as you think you are,” Bond said, taking a long gulp from his bourbon glass.

There was a silence from Lee. “Wait. Do you mean you’re  _ not  _ straight?” He sat up, raising his eyebrows at Bond. “But you can’t keep your  _ hands  _ off the ladies!”

“But not  _ only  _ the ladies. What was that you were saying about context?” Bond sipped his bourbon, eying the wall. He was quite enjoying the opportunity to shock Lee. Lee always seemed to be one step ahead of him, and beating him in a conversation was the next best thing to beating him in a fight.

Lee laughed out loud. “Well, hey! What do you know? James Bond, famous ladies man, is a big ol’ bisexual just like me.”

The corner of Bond’s lip curled, fighting a smile. “I guess there’s still a few secrets about me you haven’t figured out.”

Lee gave him a speculative, sidelong glance. “I guess there are,” he agreed. “But I think it’ll be fun to investigate those last few secrets.”

Bond refilled his glass of bourbon, and sipped it coolly. “And what makes you think you’re up to that?”

“Past experience,” Lee said with a grin, leaning forward. “So. What do you say? Let’s say, 4 PM tomorrow night, Fujin Tree Cafe, my treat?”

“We  _ could  _ do that,” Bond conceded, setting his glass of bourbon down on the table. “Or,” he said, “We could stay right here and get a start on this right here.” He smirked.

“If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting . . .” Lee said, grinning.

“Why don’t you come over here and find out?” said Bond. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked it, please leave a comment!


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